Minoan Frescoes at Tel Kabri

Aegean Art in Bronze Age Israel

This Bible History Daily article was originally published in June 2013. It has been updated.—Ed.

Excavations at Tel Kabri have uncovered fragments of painted plaster reflecting an Aegean art style seen on Cycladic and Minoan frescoes. Why did the Canaanite ruler of Tel Kabri want to adorn his palace with Aegean art? Photo: Nurith Goshen.

Over 100 years of excavations on Crete have exposed elegant Minoan frescoes that once adorned the walls of the island’s Bronze Age palaces. This distinctively colorful Aegean art style flourished in the Middle Bronze Age (1750-1550 B.C.). The nearby inhabitants of Akrotiri, a city on the Cycladic island of Thera (modern Santorini), painted numerous artworks in the style of the Minoan frescoes before the island was decimated by a volcanic eruption in the late 17th or 16th century B.C.

Until recently, there was no archaeological evidence of Minoan frescoes beyond the islands of the Aegean. Art exhibiting Aegean characteristics has been uncovered at recent excavations in Egypt, Syria and Turkey—and at the Canaanite palace of Tel Kabri in Israel. In the July/August 2013 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Tel Kabri excavators Eric H. Cline and Assaf Yasur-Landau explore how Aegean art, architecture and painted plaster fragments reminiscent of Minoan frescoes ended up at Canaanite Tel Kabri.

The Tel Kabri excavations have uncovered the oldest and largest wine cellar in the ancient Near East, as part of the storage rooms of the Middle Bronze Age Canaanite palace. Learn more >>

Aegean art at Tel Kabri was first discovered in 1989, when Aharon Kempinksi and Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier uncovered a checkerboard floor with depictions of Aegean flora as well as 2,000 painted plaster fragments exhibiting characteristics similar to Minoan frescoes. The current Tel Kabri excavation, under the direction of BAR authors Eric H. Cline and Assaf Yasur-Landau,* has uncovered many more pieces of painted wall plaster. In addition to Aegean art, the team recently exposed an expensive building lined with Aegean-style orthostat blocks and dowel holes similar to those found in Aegean palaces.

In “Aegeans in Israel: Minoan Frescoes at Tel Kabri,” authors Eric H. Cline and Assaf Yasur-Landau write that “the distinctive colorful frescoes” from the Minoan palace of Knossos “are a part of every art history course.” Was the ruler of Tel Kabri familiar with the Aegean art at Knossos, such as this famous bull-leaping panel? Photo: Erich Lessing.

Why would the Canaanite ruler of Tel Kabri want to adorn his palace with Aegean art reminiscent of Crete’s Minoan frescoes? Were these Minoan/Aegean artists traveling on their own, or were they lent from one ruler to another? Do the presence of Minoan frescoes and Aegean art decorations suggest that Tel Kabri was part of a “cosmopolitan” Mediterranean group—or that the king wanted to style himself as such? Find out more in “Aegeans in Israel: Minoan Frescoes at Tel Kabri” in the July/August 2013 issue of BAR. Eric H. Cline and Assaf Yasur-Landau describe discoveries at Tel Kabri, comparable evidence of Minoan frescoes at Tell el-Dab‘a in Egypt, Qatna in Syria and Alalakh in Turkey and the mystery of the short-term spread of Aegean art around the Bronze Age Mediterranean.

Notes:

Further Reading in Bible History Daily:

Digs 2014: Layers of MeaningLearn how archaeologists and volunteers at Tel Kabri adapt their field methodologies to meet the specific needs of their site. Read the full article as it appeared in the January/February 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

From the FieldBible History Daily’s blog on the 2013 excavations at Tel Kabri, straight from the soil to your screen.

Add Your Comments

While I have seen it disparaged, the KJV plainly states that the Philistines came from Crete (Caphtor). Whether their migration was voluntary or of necessity, that would explain the Minoan influence in the Middle East.
Amos 9:7 … Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?

Tel Kabri is in Northern Israel, but it was also, at one time in Southern Phoenicia.
The King of Tel Kabri was part of the great Phoenician Trading Empire.
Crete and Thera were the largest of the many Phoenician colonies found all over the Mediterranean. Tel Kabri was just one of the many Administrative Trading Palaces that were set up to collect and trade.

From MINOAN FRESCOES IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN page 93:
The use of the fresco technique in the Alalakh, Tel Kabri, and Tell el-Dabca/Avaris
murals, representing an isolated and rather short-lived element in the Levant and Egypt,
forms, in combination with the Aegean iconography and style, the strongest argument for the
suggestion that this phenomenon cannot be explained without direct reference to Aegean
fresco painting artistry. There are various possibilities: the frescoes were painted by travelling
Aegean artisans; they were painted under the supervision of Aegean artists with the assistance
of Levantine painters trained by them; they were painted by Levantine painters trained by
Aegean masters. It is difficult to decide in each case which of these solutions is the correct
one. We would agree with P.P. Betancourt that only a very small percentage of the fresco
paintings is known and “that we are touching the tip of the iceberg of a whole series of
interrelated workshops, working in Knossos, the Aegean islands, on the coast of Western Asia
and in Egypt, perhaps travelling back and forth, perhaps occasionally exchanging personnel
or going back to Knossos to learn the most recent things.”284
7. The Alalakh, Tel Kabri and Tell el-Dabca Frescoes Within the Eastern Mediterranean
Koiné
As argued in an earlier paper, we see the phenomenon of the Alalakh and Tel Kabri
frescoes (to which now the Tell el Dabca/Avaris frescoes are to be added) in the framework of
diplomatic relations and gift exchange between the rulers in the ancient Near East, in which
the rulers of Crete whose palaces “appear to be at the West end of a long line of palaces,
palace-temples and temples stretching to the East as far as the Euphrates and the Tigris”285
were involved.286

I don’t understand why BAR continues to ignore Velikovsky, whose ideas keep getting shown to be true. The “Dark Age” of Greece is a myth created by the erroneous chronology of Egyptologists who academia accepted as gospel truth. Once the inflated centuries of Egypt are properly shortened, the chronology of the Levant, Ugarit and the fertile crescent makes a lot more sense. But read the evidence for yourself here: http://www.varchive.org/dag/index.htm, and the first Ages of Chaos book: From the Exodus to King Akhnaton, and make up your own mind. The neglect of Velikovsky (and to a lesser extent Rohl) and the lack of at the very least a vigorous debate from opposing camps is inappropriate for a journal like BAR.

Crete is generally accepted to be the “Caphtor” referred to in the Hebrew Scriptures, and hence the place from which the Philistines migrated to Canaan. (Jer 47:4; Am 9:7) Some scholars also connect the “Cherethites” with the Cretans; the Greek Septuagint reads “Cretans” instead of “Cherethites” at both Ezekiel 25:15-17 and Zephaniah 2:5-7. (See CHERETHITES.) If the identification of Caphtor with Crete is accepted, as seems reasonable, then the early inhabitants of the island were descendants of Mizraim, whose name is Biblically equivalent to Egypt.—Ge 10:13, 14.The civilization the Cretans developed was very distinctive from those of Mesopotamia and Egypt but equally resplendent. The Cretan religion placed emphasis on the female element, with a mother goddess receiving greatest prominence. As with other fertility religions, the serpent is regularly present in the representations of the goddess, either held in her hands or coiled around her body. A minor male deity is usually associated with her, perhaps in the mother-son relationship frequently found in this type of cult. vilization the Cretans developed was very distinctive from those of Mesopotamia and Egypt but equally resplendent. The Cretan religion placed emphasis on the female element, with a mother goddess receiving greatest prominence. As with other fertility religions, the serpent is regularly present in the representations of the goddess, either held in her hands or coiled around her body. A minor male deity is usually associated with her, perhaps in the mother-son relationship frequently found in this type of cult. http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200271462

Continuing the Discussion

[…] 2013 issue of BAR, Tel Kabri excavation directors Eric Cline and Assaf Yasur-Landau describe the unique Aegean-style art at the Middle Bronze Age site in Israel. BAS web editor Noah Wiener is currently taking part in the excavation at Tel Kabri. In this blog […]

[…] 2013 issue of BAR, Tel Kabri excavation directors Eric Cline and Assaf Yasur-Landau describe the unique Aegean-style art at the Middle Bronze Age site in Israel. BAS web editor Noah Wiener is currently taking part in the excavation at Tel Kabri. In this blog […]

[…] written a couple of posts about the life of an archaeologist working at Tel Kabri, and you can read more about previous seasons’ fieldwork here, including the discovery of unique Aegean-style art and architecture at the Bronze Age site in […]

[…] 2013 issue of BAR, Tel Kabri excavation directors Eric Cline and Assaf Yasur-Landau describe the unique Aegean-style art at the Middle Bronze Age site in Israel. BAS web editor Noah Wiener is currently taking part in the excavation at Tel Kabri. In this blog, […]

[…] 2013 issue of BAR, Tel Kabri excavation directors Eric Cline and Assaf Yasur-Landau describe the unique Aegean-style art at the Middle Bronze Age site in Israel. BAS web editor Noah Wiener is currently taking part in the excavation at Tel Kabri. In the Tel […]

[…] 2013 issue of BAR, Tel Kabri excavation directors Eric Cline and Assaf Yasur-Landau describe the unique Aegean-style art at the Middle Bronze Age site in Israel. BAS web editor Noah Wiener is currently taking part in the excavation at Tel Kabri. In this blog […]

[…] 2013 issue of BAR, Tel Kabri excavation directors Eric Cline and Assaf Yasur-Landau describe the unique Aegean-style art at the Middle Bronze Age site in Israel. BAS web editor Noah Wiener is currently taking part in the excavation at Tel Kabri. In this blog […]

[…] the latest excavations at Tel Kabri on the Mediterranean coast, just north of Haifa, have revealed Aegean wall paintings from that period. In fact, Minoan wall paintings have been found all along the coast from the Egyptian Delta to […]

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